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Acceptance – Colliding By Design

Acceptance reunited to release what is only their second full length album in 2017, entitled Colliding By Design. The band signed with Rise Records, who opted to do four variants for the record, some exclusive to their traditional bundles. Thankfully there was only one bundle exclusive variant, but no shortage of useless bundle options though.

The bundle exclusive is half clear/half “doublemint with black splatter limited to 400 copies. “Doublemint” is simply mint green. At least that was the color that was advertised when pre-orders went live. What actually wound up shipping to people was that color scheme, but with red splatter instead of black. Needless to say lots of people were surprised when they opened up their “black” splatter copies.

The bundles ranged in price from $33 up to $61. There were five bundles in total, all with different names. Two of them were the $33 bundle, with different t-shirts in each one along with a poster and digital download. The next tier bundle, costing $52, had your choice of the two shirts from the $33 bundles along with the same poster and digital download, but added a CD and cassette copy of the album. The top tier bundle, costing $61, had all the aforementioned items, including both t-shirt designs instead of your choice of one.

The other variants are “classic” black limited to 100 copies, oxblood in coke bottle green limited to 600 copies and oxblood limited to 3,000 copies. The oxblood in coke bottle green is a Rise Record exclusive, which is still available as of posting this. I have no idea where the black was available from (it was never for sale on Merchnow), or where you can buy it at this point. The oxblood was a Pledgemusic (which I will explain about a bit later) exclusive variant, at least at first. I ordered this record from an online distro and received a copy on oxblood.

Initially the band went through Pledgemusic to fund the release of this album, way back in May 2016. They offered up the typical crowd funding goodies, like autographed items, test pressings, exclusive clothing, handwritten lyric sheets, studio hang outs and private shows at your house. You could pre-order the yet unnamed album at this time too, and with this preliminary pre-order the band released cover art that differs drastically from the final product. I’m including a photo of this early version of the cover art below, it should be obvious which it is. The record, on either black or colored vinyl, cost $30 through Pledgemusic, or $40 for it to be autographed.

In December 2016 it was announced that the band signed with Rise Records, and that their new album was slated for a release date of February 24, 2017. And that is where some issues started arising with the Pledgemusic exclusive variant. There were some delays with Pledgemusic items shipping, not just the exclusive vinyl variant. When people starting asking what was going on with their Pledgemusic stuff, the band sent out a statement saying that when they signed with Rise, they wanted everything to ship through their merch company (Merchnow). The band sent everything to them in a timely manner, but the merch company was slow in shipping.

So I’m assuming that is how Rise Records obtained the Pledgemusic exclusive variant, as the band pressed a certain amount, sent Merchnow or Rise most if not all of the copies, and Rise sent out the leftover copies after Pledgemusic orders were fulfilled, to distros. This is where I bought a copy from, and received it on oxblood.

Retail price on this is around $18; $16.50 if you buy directly from the label (via Merchnow) or around $18 if you buy from most any indie record store. Some online distros may be cheaper though, especially seeing as it’s been a few months since this album came out. With that price in mind, it’s a bit of a rip-off.

Seeing as another Rise release from around the same time; At The Drive-In’s in•ter a•li•a was on 180 gram vinyl housed in a very nice gatefold jacket with a printed dust sleeve, and only cost $1.50 more, it’s shameful that the label decided to release this Acceptance record on what is maybe standard weight vinyl (it’s very thin) in a cheap, thin single pocket jacket without an insert or printed dust sleeve.

There was a lot of both hype and high expectations for this album, but for me it’s a huge let down. Phantoms was such a good, high energy album, while Colliding By Design is anything but. It’s just not a good album by any stretch. But I felt the compulsion to buy it anyway to keep my Acceptance collection going. Though I waited for the price to come down significantly, where I snagged it for $11 shipped. For that price I felt comfortable buying a mediocre at best album.